Refugees in the IT Sector: Young Syrians’ Economic Subjectivities and Familial Lives in Jordan

Abstract

This article explores refugee economic subjectivity in the context of restrictive asylum policies and disrupted transnational family lives. Drawing on fieldwork with young Syrian refugees pursuing IT training in Jordan, I focus on the “coding boot camp,” an emerging educational format in the field of refugee professional training. I thus explore how Syrian youths approach humanitarian policies in which, in the absence of full social and economic rights for refugees, the question of livelihoods is addressed through the paradigms of self‐reliance, creativity, and innovation. Reframing the refugee from a “protected” to a “productive” subject, and offering individual solutions to a structural economic impasse, these policies produce tensions between individual responsibilities and more‐than‐individual relations and identifications—with families, religious identities, and national communities—that remain unresolved. The findings contribute to geographical scholarship on economic subjectivity, familial relations, and the migrant and refugee condition, while shedding light on some of the effects of the encounter between technology‐centred, neoliberal approaches to humanitarianism and restrictive migration regimes in responses to the Syrian displacement.

Extractive Landscapes: The Case of the Jordan Refugee Compact

“…6 In these studies, the work permit process is found to be complex and time-consuming, with many employers continuing to employ refugees without permits. 7 My findings expand upon this research into the impact of economic policies on migrants' and refugees' subjectivities 8 and Syrian refugee policies focused on employment in particular. 9 This scholarship offers a critical picture of the merging of humanitarian and economic agendas, looking at the effects of a major policy trend that intersects neoliberal values and refugee policies.…”

Country Reviews of Social Assistance in Crises: A Compendium of Rapid Assessments of the Nexus Between Social Protection and Humanitarian Assistance in Crisis Settings

“…In the absence of full social and economic rights for refugees, the problem of livelihoods has in some cases been addressed through assumptions of self-reliance, creativity and innovation, such as coding boot camps for refugees (Pascucci 2019). These have limitations; for example, coding requires education and language skills that not all beneficiaries possess (Schuettler and Caron 2020).…”

The impact of the international crisis on the entrepreneurial intentions of refugees

“…The study also highlights the complexities of the legal, social and financial conditions these entrepreneurs attempted to mitigate to start businesses. Pascucci (2018), who introduces the concept of economic subjectivity in refugee entrepreneurship, examines young Syrian refugees in the information technology sector who viewed entrepreneurship as an empowerment mechanism to transform their lives from dependent to independent and productive.…”